June 29, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
PRESS CLIPPINGS
Despite several setbacks Bill and Melinda Gates have experienced as their foundation seeks to overhaul America’s high schools, the billionaire philanthropist and his wife plan to learn from their mistakes and stay the course, writes BusinessWeek (June 26).
Since 2000 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, has spent $1-billion on education efforts but has seen minimal gains in academic achievement at the schools it supports, says the magazine.
However, the foundation has succeeded in spotlighting the “urgency of the country’s high-school dropout problem” and in championing the idea of small schools, which allow teachers and administrators to get to know individual students and “get them more engaged in learning,” says the magazine.
One lesson the foundation has already learned: Making schools smaller does not necessarily make them better. “It’s vital to hire motivated and qualified teachers and institute tougher academic standards,” says the magazine.
Many schools in New York City supported by the foundation have been success stories.
But at least one high school in Denver closed after failing to reinvent itself with a $1-million grant from the foundation, because of a host of missteps including inexperienced principals and an unfocused plan of action, says the article.
However, Gates Foundation officials have discussed mishaps and have also hired outside researchers to routinely evaluate their grant making.
“Where there are problems,” Melinda Gates tells the magazine, she and her husband are unafraid “to take those [negative] results and publish them broadly and tell everybody: ‘Yep, here are some things we’re finding. Let’s have a conversation about it, and now let’s figure out how to solve it.’”
The article is available online at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_26/b3990001.htm.
